Thursday 24 November 2016

If I'm Not Back Again This Time Tomorrow...


It is 25 years to the day that Freddie Mercury died. He would have been 70 this year – is the fact you will hear bandied around. If it’s possible for there to be a ‘greatest’ voice in music, then Freddie had it. The sound, power and style of delivery transcended mere talent, there was something divine about it; this is perhaps why it’s impossible for anyone to cover a song Freddie sang without their performance feeling lacking in some way. He was arguably the ‘greatest’ (again, if there is such a thing) front man of all time – he could certainly command a stadium of over 100,000 people better than anyone else. There is probably no other lead singer who is so universally adored either – and I know this because I have quite a few Freddie Mercury T-shirts and, no matter where I wear them or who’s around, someone always comments and says ‘great t-shirt, Freddie is such a legend’, or words to that effect. So, to celebrate Freddie (in a slightly weird way) here is an ill-advised picture of me with some – about half - of my Freddie T-shirts.


Channel 5 recently released a pretty poor - and markedly depressing - dramatized documentary, which basically just showed Freddie getting ill and dying. The best thing about it was JP Blunt playing Freddie, as he does at least look like Freddie. The rest of the cast was hysterically badly chosen, and as for their wigs… well, you just have to see them. Perhaps less depressing will be the long awaited Queen biopic, which begins shooting in 2017. The film, ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, has taken a long time to get going, with different people cast or rumored to play Freddie. Rami Malek (off that Mr Robot show) has apparently now been cast in the role. From what I hear, it’s a film about the band rather than just about Freddie, but the success of the film will undoubtedly rely on how well the greatly missed luminary is portrayed. Lower your expectations to maximize chance of satisfaction. 

 

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